Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Short Rant: Why do people criticize things that they know nothing about, then expect to be taken seriously?

Alright, why is that people seem to think that making this statement "I'm not an expert on -insert (Biology, Physics, Politics, History)-" before going on to criticize those fields or topics think that they are making good arguments? They already admitted defeat by saying that they don't know a single thing about what they are criticizing.

Here is a poor example that I came up with, "Oh, I don't know anything about calculus but there is no way that you can calculate the escape velocity using calculus."

I am sure that many people have come across this before, it just really ticks me off that people think that this is somehow a good argument.

Another thing that ticks me off are people who criticize things without knowing anything about what they are criticizing. This is very similar to the scenario above, except that in this case the person doesn't bother with telling us that he is fool before he opens his mouth, you have to find this out after the fact when you get a statement like e.g. "Then why is evolution not happening anymore? Then how do you explain ghosts? Or, then how do you explain magic?" In both these scenarios the person has lost touch with reality and is depending on the fantasy world that has been built up in their own brains. Sorry to say this but ghosts, magic, anal probing aliens only exist in your imagination, not in reality. As for the statement of why evolution is not happening now, this is a problem of making up a fantasy version of evolution in your own head, no scientist thinks that evolution is not happening, the statement that it is no longer occurring doesn't even fit the definition of evolution, let alone have anything to do with the theory.

Just as it does not make any sense to make up your own definition of gravity, then go on to say that since your fantasy version of gravity does not work, this somehow proves modern physicists wrong, the same thing applies for everything else.